Scientists turned to weather predictions and radar to create continental forecast maps for particular nights. Redder colors mean more migrating birds. (Credit: Benjamin Van Doren)
For many Americans and Canadians, a telltale sign of the changing seasons is a V-shaped flock of honking Canada Geese flying overhead during their migration.
These birds get attention for being large, common and noisy. But billions of other American birds migrate each fall and spring with hardly any fanfare, making t ...read more
Colors on this map show where and by how much monthly sea surface temperature differed from the 1981 to 2010 average during August 2018. (Source: NOAA)
As Hurricane Florence began lashing the Carolinas this morning, another potentially disruptive atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon continues to brew thousands of miles away in the Pacific: El Niño.
El Niño weather impacts. (Source: NOAA)
It’s not here yet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration&rsq ...read more
(Credit: Ollyy/Shutterstock)
The power of our fleshy brain to control our perceptions is well established, but it’s still hard to really believe, sometimes. It’s tempting to think of ourselves as perfect observers, passively gathering data and information. But however real reality may seem, it’s just whatever our brains our feeding us. We all have various biases that, unknown to us, color how we see and interpret information.
Confirmation bias is a particularly prominent ...read more
As Florence swirled toward the Carolinas today, an astronaut took some chilling photos of the hurricane
They eye of Hurricane Florence, as seen from the International Space Station on Sept. 12, 2018 (Source: ESA/NASA—Alexander Gerst)
“Ever stared down the gaping eye of a category 4 hurricane? It’s chilling, even from space.”
So writes Alexander Gerst, a European Space Agency astronaut aboard the International Space Station who shot this stunning photo looking ...read more
A view of Seattle, one of the cities included in the study, taken by satellite. (Credit: Naeblys/Shutterstock)
Scientists say they have a new way of measuring obesity — from space.
Can those jokes — it doesn’t have anything to do with individuals. Instead, researchers from the University of Washington took satellite maps of various U.S. cities and trained an AI to look for features of the neighborhoods that might be relevant to health. This included things like green spa ...read more
An artist’s illustration of the proposed Mars base. (Credit: Claudio Leonardi/EPFL)
The idea of building a base to colonize Mars and become an interplanetary species has seen decades of talk and not a whole lot of action, but now at least there’s plan.
On September 10, researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a Switzerland university and research center, laid out a step-by-step guide to creating a sustainable research facility on Ma ...read more
Astronaut Ricky Arnold captured this photo of Hurricane Florence from the International Space Station on September 10, 2018. (Credit: NASA)
As Hurricane Florence careens toward the Atlantic coast, more than a million Carolina residents are evacuating while millions more are hunkering down with supplies.
Hurricane Florence intensified incredibly rapidly this week, morphing from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane in less than 48 hours.
How it intensified is understood, but scientists sti ...read more
(Credit: BlurryMe/Shutterstock)
In life, timing is everything.
Your body’s internal clock – the circadian rhythm – regulates an enormous variety of processes: when you sleep and wake, when you’re hungry, when you’re most productive. Given its palpable effect on so much of our lives, it’s not surprising that it has an enormous impact on our health as well. Researchers have linked circadian health to the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and neurodegene ...read more
